It’s a Friday in December and the Edmonton Oilers are not
only in playoff position, but they’re there on merit. The really scary thing?
If the underlying numbers are to be believed, the rest of the season may go
even better.

Kris Russell had a phenomenal debut with the Edmonton Oilers. Playing on his off-side along with Andrej Sekera on the second pairing,
Russell’s strong play gave the Oilers two quality defence pairings through the
first few games of the season, a luxury the team hasn’t had since Lubomir
Visnovsky and Sheldon Souray were haphazardly discarded at the start of the
rebuild.

Unfortunately for Edmonton, the honeymoon is now over.
Russell’s play has fallen off, and those concerns about the second pairing are
once again worth noting.

October has been a great month for Peter Chiarelli. After a
controversial summer, his Edmonton Oilers are sitting atop the Western
Conference with a magnificent 7-2-0 record, and newcomers like Adam Larsson and
Kris Russell have been key components to that successful start.

Yet while Larsson and Russell have been important to
Edmonton’s progress this season, it’s another move of the general manager’s
that really stands out as being essential: the decision at the 2015 draft to
roll the dice on Cam Talbot as the team’s starting goaltender.